The larger issue of the Manning case

After 19 months in military prisons — much of the time in solitary confinement — Pfc. Bradley Manning finally emerged over the past week from the netherworld to which he has been confined since his arrest in the largest breach of classified information in U.S. history.

Seven days of hearings at Fort Meade, Md., produced what the prosecution called “overwhelming” evidence that the low-ranking Army intelligence analyst was the one who sent hundreds of thousands of military reports and diplomatic cables to the transparency website WikiLeaks.

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But the hearing also produced equally compelling evidence of the larger issue that is often overlooked in discussions of Manning’s alleged misdeeds: the systematic breakdown in security that enabled a low-ranking enlisted man to abscond with a staggering quantity of classified Pentagon and State Department documents.

Manning’s facing prosecution because “he’s the one that pushed send and the other guys didn’t,” said John Hutson, a retired rear admiral and former judge advocate general of the Navy.

But, Hutson said, that doesn’t mean Manning is the only one deserving of blame for what happened.

“You can tell by his uniform he’s the juniorest guy in the office. There’s this whole hierarchy of people above him, many, many of whom … failed in one respect or another. They failed in their responsibilities,” Hutson said.

Despite a series of violent outbursts and other indications he was in serious mental distress, Manning’s security clearance wasn’t suspended until he was arrested in May of last year. Some soldiers had long thought he was a threat to himself and others. At least one believed Manning had lunged for a weapon during a fight with another soldier.

Yet Manning was allowed to spend about six months in a purportedly secure intelligence center in eastern Iraq with routine access to classified information — the same center where he sometimes sat at his computer or curled up on the floor, unresponsive to other soldiers.

And the fact that a junior soldier was downloading 700,000 reports, most of them classified, didn’t seem to set off any alarms. Nor were there any questions at the time about why an analyst in Iraq needed vast numbers of military reports from Afghanistan, diplomatic cables about Iceland or assessments of detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

Security was so lax that anyone with access to the classified network could burn reams of “secret” data to a CD and simply walk out the door.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers said the episode was in some ways a predictable outcome of the rush after the Sept. 11 attacks to share intelligence across the government and to push intelligence to the front lines in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“Everybody was on the bandwagon of sharing information with everybody,” the Michigan Republican told POLITICO. “You’re in a very fast-paced combat environment trying to ensure the warfighter up front had all the information available. … Mistakes were clearly made but in a context where people were trying to share information as quickly as possible, this is what happens. When you get someone who goes off the rails, they can do something like this.”

One former senior military official said it’s a bit odd that Manning is the only person on the hook if the damage caused by WikiLeaks was as severe as some have said.

“When you listen to people across the government, … you would think this [leak] was causing the world to spin off its axis,” said the official, who asked not to be named. “If that is true, why don’t we then hold people accountable further up the chain?”

While Manning is clearly facing the most serious punishment, others involved have not escaped unscathed.

After Manning’s arrest and as the criminal investigation of his conduct continued, the Army launched a probe into the shortcomings in personnel and security procedures. The probe by Lt. Gen Robert Caslen, concluded earlier this year, led to 15 people being disciplined, according to Army spokesman George Wright.